Judge Tackles Police Use Of Radar To Scan Home Interiors And Comes Up With No Real Answers

Found on Techdirt on Wednesday, 21 January 2015
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Denson argues the police had no reason to enter his home, much less search it. The only reason they did was because the Doppler radar indicated someone was in the house. He also argues that the use of the radar should have negated the officers' stated need to perform a sweep of the house for other individuals -- this protective sweep being the instrument of discovery for Denson's weapons stash.

Gorsuch notes that the use of these devices means this sort of thing will be discussed again. As for the police department, it's safe to assume it isn't interested in divulging further details about its technology, even if what it withholds may jeopardize the evidence it obtained.

So with the "stand your ground" laws, maybe home owners are free to shoot back?

GCHQ captured emails of journalists from top international media

Found on The Guardian on Monday, 19 January 2015
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Emails from the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, the Sun, NBC and the Washington Post were saved by GCHQ and shared on the agency’s intranet as part of a test exercise by the signals intelligence agency.

More than 100 editors, including those from all the national newspapers, have signed a letter, coordinated by the Society of Editors and Press Gazette, to the UK prime minister, David Cameron, protesting at snooping on journalists’ communications.

Wannabe king Cameron won't change anything. He is totally ignorant of what people think and looks like he is on a powertrip, fueled by spooks who whisper into his ears.

Paris terror attacks: ISPs face pressure to share MORE data with governments

Found on The Register on Sunday, 11 January 2015
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Government ministers from European states, who met in Paris today in the wake of the atrocious attacks that stunned the French capital's population last week, have called on internet firms to do a better job of cooperating with spooks and police to help them fight terrorism.

The take-away from politicians on both sides of the pond today, once you set aside the posturing about freedom of expression: demands for greater surveillance of citizens' movements online are back on the agenda in a big way.

That was expected. However, more surveillance will do nothing at all, because those three terrorists already were monitored and well-known by the police. It was not the lack of data which let this happen, but mistakes. So, instead of asking for more surveillance, they should fix the way they work with existing data first.

Marvel releases tiny teaser trailer for 'Ant-Man'

Found on CNet News on Saturday, 03 January 2015
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On Friday, Marvel decided to release a teaser of "Ant-Man" with a sense of humor by showing off 10 seconds of exciting moments in miniature.

Fans wanting to see the full-sized trailer can catch it during the two-hour series premiere of "Marvel's Agent Carter" Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

Another comic adoption. Pretty sure the trailer size fits to the plot.

UFOs in the '50s skies? CIA admits: 'IT WAS US'

Found on The Register on Thursday, 01 January 2015
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The US government's Central Intelligence Agency has 'fessed up about reports of UFO sightings in the 1950s by playfully tweeting "it was us".

Its secret U-2 spy plane flew at very high altitudes, which baffled ordinary folk on the ground, unaware at the time that such heights were possible for contemporary aircraft.

They foolishly assume anybody would believe what they say. Snowden has proven that almost always the exact opposite of what they say is true.

Everything We Know About the Missing AirAsia Plane

Found on Wired on Sunday, 28 December 2014
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An AirAsia passenger jet carrying 162 people to Singapore went missing off the coast of Borneo on Sunday morning shortly after leaving Indonesia, and the search has resumed after being suspended overnight. Shortly before losing contact with air traffic control, the crew sought permission to deviate from the planned flight path to avoid foul weather.

Authorities suspended the search as night fell, having found no sign of the aircraft. The search is to resume Monday morning, and CNN reported that ships in the area will stay out, rather than return to shore, with their search lights illuminated.

Eight months after MH370 disappeared, the next plane got lost. With the wonders of modern technology you can track a cellphone, but something as important as a plane still has no independent, uninterruptable sender on board to send out tracking signals.

American Sniper Feeds America's Hero Complex, and It Isn't the Truth About War

Found on Alternet on Saturday, 27 December 2014
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The stories I came back with don’t really look like anything in the new breed of Hollywood war films, where central truths about war have all but vanished, even though they’re mostly based on real life.

Lone Survivor, the highest grossing war film of this era, portrays Navy Seals so adept at killing the Taliban that it seems their only weakness is mercy on goat-herders. In Zero Dark Thirty and Captain Phillips, Seal teams emerge only at the climax, with the long tail of logistical support from conventional aviation, infantry and intelligence units obscured by the shadow of the elite.

For every film or bestseller or PlayStation blockbuster about that tiny minority of commandos, the public misses another shot at the larger experience of soldiering in Iraq and Afghanistan. People under 40 no longer ask what war is like; they ask if it’s like Call of Duty.

Simply put, it's propaganda. People would not like movies which end like they do for most of those involved: with a trauma or maybe even with lost limbs; or you don't come back at all. Picturing the war like it really is would wipe those heroes off the screen and replace them with pain, agony and war crimes on both sides; and by doing that, the support for going to war would crumble and be replaced with a demand for peaceful solutions; something that an entire industry delivering the tools does not want.

Damage to German Factory Shows Danger of ICS Hacks

Found on eWEEK on Friday, 26 December 2014
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The attack resulted in "massive damage" to the physical systems; a number of "system breakdowns resulted in an incident where a furnace could not be shut down in the regular way and the furnace was in an undefined condition," according to a translation of a report released by the German government.

TrapX's Wright argued that neither the compromise of the German manufacturing plant nor the breach of Sony were conducted by criminals with profit motives, but by more organized attackers with more complex motives, such as corporate espionage.

That's why critical systems have to be airgapped from any other network. Plus, something like a furnace could profit from some old fashioned technology, like a switch to turn it of manually.

Sony releases The Interview online

Found on BBC News on Wednesday, 24 December 2014
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The film is being offered through a dedicated website - seetheinterview.com - as well as via Google and Microsoft but is only available in the US.

After pulling the film, and being strongly criticised by the US president, Sony Pictures has played what was its only possible trump card: calling on help from the likes of Microsoft and Google to get this film out nationwide.

It's a little strange that little Kim would get that angry about a single movie.

Battle of the Five Armies is a soulless end to the flawed Hobbit trilogy

Found on Ars Technica on Tuesday, 23 December 2014
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The Desolation of Smaug, the second of the three movies, was probably the one that strayed farthest afield from the source material. It invented several characters and showed situations that either didn't exist in the book or happened "off-screen" and were explained later.

The battles in Battle of the Five Armies are deadly boring, bereft of suspense, excessively padded, and predictable to the point of being contemptuous of the audience. Suspense is attempted mostly by a series of last-minute saves and switches.

If you make a movie based on a book, stick close to the plot and don't invent things. Or just write your own movie and put "The Hobbit" back on the shelf.